Use minimal theme by default ?

[IndrajeetPatil]

IMHO, most of the defaults for tlf plot themes are unnecessarily complex. I would personally recommend scaling down this complexity and adopting more minimal themes, which are easier for the reader to understand.

I know that the users can use their own theme to customize the plots, but we should be doing whatever we can to provide custom settings that reduces this extra work for the user.

For example, box plot defaults

Can be something like this:

library(ggplot2)

boxData <- data.frame(x = c(rep("A", 500), rep("B",500)), y = rlnorm(1000))

ggplot(boxData, aes(x, y)) +
  geom_boxplot() +
  theme_minimal()

^{Created on 2022-03-04 by the reprex package (v2.0.1.9000)}

Here is another example with histogram

which, with a minimal theme, can look something like the following:

library(ggplot2)

histData <- data.frame(x = rnorm(100))

ggplot(histData, aes(x)) +
  geom_histogram(color = "black") +
  theme_minimal()
#> `stat_bin()` using `bins = 30`. Pick better value with `binwidth`.

^{Created on 2022-03-04 by the reprex package (v2.0.1.9000)}

[IndrajeetPatil]

Alternatively, you can also just soften the existing grid:

[PavelBal]

@IndrajeetPatil I like your suggestions for the default plots.

Also - no grid by default.